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Catherynne M. Valente Quotes about Children

All Catherynne M. Valente Quotes Autumn Bones Children quotes Country Dancing Devil Falling In Love Grace Grief Heart Home House Hurt Kissing Labyrinth Language Lying Magic Memories Moon Morning Reading Running Skins Sleep War Water Wine Winning Winter Worry Writing
But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized, and can only attract their like.

But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized, and can only attract their like.

Catherynne M. Valente
Children, Dark, Dice
Catherynne M. Valente (2014). “The Fairyland Series”, p.124, Macmillan

As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits.

Catherynne M. Valente
Mother, Children, Kissing
Catherynne M. Valente (2014). “The Fairyland Series”, p.181, Macmillan

Do you suppose you will look the same when you are an old woman as you do now? Most folk have three faces—the face they get when they’re children, the face they own when they’re grown, and the face they’ve earned when they’re old. But when you live as long as I have, you get many more. I look nothing like I did when I was a wee thing of thirteen. You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.

Catherynne M. Valente
Children, Grieving, Long

All children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless at all.

Catherynne M. Valente
Sweet, Children, Reading

Children make prayers so thoughtlessly, building them up like sand castles—and they are always surprised when suddenly the castle becomes real, and the iron gate grinds shut.

Catherynne M. Valente
Prayer, Children, Real

The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching in righteous parades, but Papa never misses his wine with supper. Therefore, it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one’s stomach than of one’s nation.

Catherynne M. Valente
Strong, Children, Wine

September had never been betrayed before. She did not even know what to call the feeling in her chest, so bitter and sour. Poor child. There is always a first time, and it is never the last time.

Catherynne M. Valente
Children, Feelings, Lasts
Catherynne M. Valente (2014). “The Fairyland Series”, p.500, Macmillan

That stirring which had fluttered in her on first glimpsing the sea—that stirring landlocked children know so well—moved in her now, with the golden stars over head, and the green fireflies glinting on the wooded shore. She carefully unfolded the stirring that she had so tightly packed away. It billowed out like a sail, and she laughed, despite herself, despite hunger and hard things ahead.

Catherynne M. Valente
Stars, Children, Firefly
Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making”, p.176, Feiwel & Friends

I perceive that you have a cruel heart, my child. It lies within your breast like a smoldering blade, hissing steam at me.

Catherynne M. Valente
Children, Lying, Heart

You and I, being grown-up and having lost our hearts at least twice or thrice along the way, might shut our eyes and cry out: Not that way, child! But as we have said, September was Somewhat Heartless, and felt herself reasonably safe on that road. Children always do.

Catherynne M. Valente
Children, Heart, Eye
Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making”, p.26, Feiwel & Friends

I believe we have an utterly unique specimen on our hands: a child who listens.

Catherynne M. Valente
Children, Believe, Unique
Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making”, p.31, Macmillan

For though, as we have said, all children are heartless, this is not precisely true of teenagers. Teenage hearts are raw and new, fast and fierce, and they do not know their own strength. Neither do they know reason or restraint, and if you want to know the truth, a goodly number of grown-up hearts never learn it.

Catherynne M. Valente
Teenage, Children, Heart
Catherynne M. Valente (2014). “The Fairyland Series”, p.316, Macmillan

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